Few people in San Antonio, I'd hazard, could drive a car or ride a bike to the Hays Street Bridge without a few wrong turns or a pre-trip glance at Google Maps. I was there only a few days ago on my bike, and like always, I was the just about the only one there.

When the massive Colorado Springs wildfires broke out in young journalist Jessica Ghawi's newly adopted state last month, the 24-year-old couldn't bear to stand by and watch families suffer. Since Friday, Ghawi's name has spread across the globe for a different reason &acirc; as one of 12 people slain when gunman James Holmes opened fire at a midnight showing of the new Batman sequel in a Denver-area movie theater.

For the second time in two years, prosecutors Wednesday began outlining to a jury the strange, lurid details of an alleged abduction five years ago of a 13-year-old chronic runaway who told authorities she was gang raped by her drug dealers, tied to a bed at an East Side crack den for weeks and sold to neighborhood men for sex.

In coordinated operations, agents with the FBI, the Texas Attorney General's Office and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General arrested all 18 last year, including one each in Austin and Odessa.

A repeat drunken driving offender who hit a Harley Davidson head-on two years ago, severing the motorcyclist's leg and killing his wife, agreed to two 10-year sentences Tuesday for intoxication assault and manslaughter. Castroville resident Hyden Bustamante Lopez, 32, who was riding behind her husband on the motorcycle, suffered blunt force trauma including a severed brain stem and died at the scene.

DALLAS - Texas prison officials have changed their procedure for administering executions to a one-drug method. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice said in a statement to The Associated Press Tuesday that it would use pentobarbital in executions instead of a three-drug combination.

A San Antonio man accused of aiding in the fatal stabbing of a lower-level drug dealer during a dispute over missing pills pleaded no contest to murder Monday as jury selection was set to begin for his trial. Garcia had a bag of bloody clothes and the victim's cellphone in his possession, police said.

WASHINGTON &acirc; Texas officials defended the state's new controversial voter photo ID law at a federal trial Monday, saying the law should be implemented over Justice Department claims it would discriminate against minorities. Under cross examination, Ingram, the Texas secretary of state elections director, conceded that &acirc;clerical error&acirc; could account for votes cast by the deceased.

Legendary keyboardist Augie Meyers heads to New York on Saturday for reherasals with Tom Waits on Sunday in preparation for appearances on "Late Show with David Letterman" and "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon." The Grammy-winning Sir Douglas Quintet and Texas Tornados cofounder says they'll play material from Waits latest album, "Bad As Me."

A former Bexar County deputy has pleaded guilty to conspiring with a fellow jailer to protect drug shipments in exchange for money, according to federal court documents made public today. Franco and Cordero admitted in their plea deals that they met with an undercover FBI agent three times between 2008 and 2010, and agreed to protect cocaine shipments to and from San Antonio.

A jury ordered probation Thursday for a motorcyclist who killed his female passenger in a crash while driving drunk in 2008 &acirc; the second time he's gotten probation for a crime related to drunken driving.

By Bekah S. McNeel Everywhere I turn people are raving about Urban Pioneers. Since we moved into our Dignowity Hill home almost two years ago (generously deemed "a fixer-upper"), we've received no shortage of pats on the back from our downtown friends, and no shortage of "have you lost your minds?"